Taiwan returns their money to the taxpayer: an example the West should emulate

@ElentirENG ES 1·07·2023 · 7:12 0

The Republic of China, also called Taiwan, is a small country that is not only known for its thriving technology industry, but also for its efficiency.

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At the end of 2022 it became known that the Republic of China ended last year with a budget surplus. It is an expression that is completely foreign to citizens of Western countries, and it means that you have spent less than what you have received. A fact worthy of praise and even more if we take into account that this country is affected, due to its geographical proximity to communist China, by the terrible effects of the pandemic and the clumsy containment measures adopted by that dictatorship.

If a Western country found itself in a similar situation, its government would already be devising the most imaginative plans to waste what has been left over. But the Republic of China has chosen not to follow that path. This Thursday, the Taipei Times announced that the Taiwanese government has decided to return the excess money to taxpayers. The Republic of China government will return 6,000 New Taiwan dollars (about 195.35 US dollars or 183.19 euros) to each taxpayer. In total, some 140 billion New Taiwan dollars will be returned, leaving 40,000 in reserve.

Such a measure is not only unthinkable in the West, where we have become accustomed to a systematic public deficit -that is, to the fact that the State always spends more than it takes in, something that ends up leading the public debt to astronomical numbers- but also in communist China, which is reaching historic public deficit figures.

It should be noted, in case anyone is unaware of this fact, that the party that currently governs democratic China, the Democratic Progressive Party, is a liberal-progressive party. It is a center-left party, rather far from my ideological approaches, although it differs from many Western progressive parties in that it is a firmly anti-communist party and is committed to classic liberal recipes in economic matters. There are things of the approaches of that party that I do not like, but unlike the western left, at least it knows how to manage the economy. Western liberals could already take an example from their Taiwanese colleagues in this matter.